oooooooh great idea. flood the station with whiney emails about all about how you know more about their business than they do, but then again i forgot that becoming an instant expert in broadcasting (and everything else) comes with TFer status.

i don't know how utopia works, but in the real world, business decisions sometimes have unpleasant effects.

It is the typical corporate radio attitude, "We can replace anyone anytime because the public are idiots". Pretty much true for the most part, people will have forgotten about this whole thing in about a week or two.

If he's had a job forecasting the weather for the past 35 years, I would think that would make him a professional meteorologist. If he was a regional sales manager and did some weekend weather forecasting for his fishing buddys, then he'd be an amateur meteorologist.

ClearChannelSucks.org is a free speech website dedicated to educating the public about entertainment giant Clear Channel. Clear Channel owns over 1,200 radio stations and 37 television stations, with investments in 240 radio stations globally, and Clear Channel Entertainment (aka SFX, one of their more well-known subsidiaries) owns and operates over 200 venues nationwide. They are in 248 of the top 250 radio markets, controlling 60% of all rock programming. They outright own the tours of musicians like Janet Jackson, Aerosmith, Pearl Jam, Madonna and N'Sync. They own the network which airs Rush Limbaugh, Dr. Laura, Casey Kasem, and the Fox Sports Radio Network. With 103,000,000 listeners in the U.S. and 1,000,000,000 globally (1/6 of the world population), this powerful company has grown unchecked, using their monopoly to control the entire music industry. If you find this alarming, ClearChannelSucks.org is the place for you.

Whenever this has happened here in the midwest with a popular radio person it usually ends in one of the local competators hiring the personality and taking a bite out of the ratings of the station that did the firing. Sounds like a sure fire ratings boost to someone in that market.

You people need to understand that there's money to be made, and new owners to impress. What does the life of one blind, 65 years old man have to do with profit? Quit acting like liberals. So what if the quality goes down, and the local town loses its radio station. They'll forget about it eventually. The money is more important than them. Money is the most important thing ever. Capitalism is about being a good American that likes money. If you own a flag, you BETTER be ok with us screwing this town, and this blind 65 year old man over or you are a farking liberal. You hear me you hippies? Kindness is for losers/saps/hippies/liberals. This is our world now where money is the righteous reason to do everything. There is no right or wrong, just profit.

ZAZ:He makes $300 per month. $10 per day. This can't be a primarily profit-motivated decision.

If they fully intend to make this an automated radio station that's controlled remotely ala "clearchannel method" it doesn't matter how much they pay him. There simply wouldn't be a way to accomodate his broadcasts.

making the decision that paying $300 a month for information that can be had for free no longer fits your business model

As a former certified meteorologist, I can tell you that areas with unique topography do have strange weather patterns. Someone that has grown up there that understand the local effect weather is always going to be more accurate than the AWDS forecasts (TAFS) that the hacks at the AP and other places steal and put together to cover large regions. Lets see them predict fog or an ice storm accurately for an area without a local forecaster. They don't even know what a 540 line is. 300 bucks a month is cheap as hell for that kind of accuracy. This has nothing at all to do with the 300 bucks, and everything to do with them changing their format so they can get rid of everyone and run the station remotely.

A good friend of mine who is in the talent side of the broadcast business, once gave me a sage bit of advice. He said that if you wanted to be a part of the broadcast business, you need to be prepared for two things. First, you need to be able to handle getting fired. And second, you need to be able to handle getting fired for something that isn't necessairly your fault. Formats and ownership can change overnight. Sorry old guy, you just didn't fit in with the new plans.

I submitted this. I browse the online papers around Massachusetts looking for interesting stories. Not just for Fark -- I've been doing that since before I started submitting articles.

I live in Newton but I am aware that Western Massachusetts exists. Last time I was in North Adams I stopped at the McDonalds and while I was in the bathroom washing my hands somebody ran in to vomit into the urinal next to me. I prefer the rural areas to the cities.

If I lived there, I would join with as many friends as I could who admired this guy and the other experienced person they fired, and announce to the community that we will continue to listen to the station - but only to see who's advertising on it. We would let it be known that anyone who advertises on that station would lose our business. And if that didn't suffice, we would let it be known that anyone who does business in any way with anyone who advertises on that station would also lose our business.

Full-time reporters and a staff meteorologist form the news team that provides hourly news summaries, four 30 minute news reports~ and interactive talk programs every day.

Might I suggest...

Full-time reporters and a weather forecast that gets beamed to you via some chain-smoking compu-techie in some other time zone who doesn't give a rip about you or your family form the news team that provides hourly news summaries, four 30 minute news reports~ and interactive talk programs every day.

We would let it be known that anyone who advertises on that station would lose our business.

And that's awesome. That's what being a member of a community is about. But the problem is that in a small community, you don't have a lot of choices where to get things, or who to deal with. The better thing to do would be if a public radio station was sponsored there. Then everyone could just turn the dial. It wouldn't be very hard to turn this PR nitemare into an excellent public radio station. If everyone is close enough, they could do a small > 5 watt deal without a license.